


what she told the flowers

by tinuviel_tinuviel



Category: The Ascendance Trilogy - Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genre: F/M, and her association with flowers which i love, exploring imogen's changing view of jaron, mood: fairy tale yearning, that's it babey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25110148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinuviel_tinuviel/pseuds/tinuviel_tinuviel
Summary: "If someday the moon calls you by your name don't be surprised, because every night I tell her about you." -Shahrazad al-KhalijNo matter where she goes, Imogen tells the flowers about Jaron.
Relationships: Jaron Artolius Eckbert III/Imogen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	what she told the flowers

i.

Imogen told the flowers about him in Farthenwood. They were her only confidants; no one else knew the sound of her voice, nor cared to hear it, but as she sat in the far corner of the herb garden, shelling peas, she whispered to the heavy-headed marigolds about the visitors that Lord Conner had brought. “There’s a boy with mischief in his eyes,” she told them. “You’re such cheerful, sunny things, but you wouldn’t trust him a minute if you saw those eyes. Green as these peas,” she said, brandishing a fistful of peas at the swaying marigolds. “Pretty as a changeling child, and full, full, full of trouble. I won’t go anywhere near him.”

ii.

She told the flowers about him in Drylliad. Her hands felt strange empty, so she went to the queen’s gardens often, pulling weeds from the beds of roses and bending so close to smell them that her nose brushed the petals. “There’s a boy that used to live here. You might know him better than me. Maybe he came here with the queen when he was a child; they say she loved roses. Maybe he does too. You’re such lovely, fragile things, with your roots deep in the soil he was born over. You belong here,” she said, then hesitated, the sun hot on her neck. “There are stories of flowers that tell secrets. Maybe everything I tell you catches like wool on your thorns. Maybe the words that vanish from my mind when he smiles are written on your petals. It’s very, very silly. I turn to his smile like you grow toward the sky.”

iii.

She told the flowers about him in Tarblade Bay. Ox-eyed daisies, their hungry roots pale and spindly by her knees as she dug into the earth with her fingers. “A boy is coming,” she said, heedless of the dark crescents of dirt catching under her nails. “A boy who shouldn’t be here. He does not care for useless things like flowers, but he needs them. Cling to the hostile soil until he comes.” She drove a glinting knife into the earth and planted the daisies above it. “You must save him if I cannot.”

iv.

She told the flowers about him in Libeth. For the first time, she didn’t shell or weed or plant. She sat in the shade of blooming clouds of rosemary and said, “I knew a boy with eyes like leaves with the sun behind him. I shouldn’t have cared for him, but I did.” A breeze caught the rosemary; veins of blue shadow danced across her closed eyelids. “You don’t know what it’s like to leave someone, and you don’t know what it is to forget. I’ll tell you: it’s like stripping off each leaf and petal, one by one, until you shiver in the wind. Tell me it’ll all grow back. Tell me I won’t miss him forever.” 

v.

There were no flowers the day she was captured, no flowers the day she was shot, no flowers the day Jaron was sentenced to hang. And Imogen wouldn’t have known what to tell them. That he was going to die. That he loved her. That he still, still, had a spark of mischief in his eyes.

That he saved them all.

The day they married she held a spray of lilies, and her heart felt like it might burst out of her chest. Hardly trusting her own voice, she lifted the flowers to confide in them once more. “There’s a boy I love,” she whispered, and then caught sight of his smile.

“Are you talking to the flowers?”

“I often do,” she said.

“And what do you tell them?” he asked, bending his head, his nearness as lovely as the scent of the lilies.

She kissed him and whispered, “I tell them about you.”


End file.
